Additude adjustment

I write a lot about trust and faith in God, not because I have an abundance of it, but because I am familiar with the struggle.

I understand what it is like to doubt the goodness of God.  When it feels like prayer is an exercise in futility and circumstances stay stubbornly unchanged, well, what’s the point in continuing to pray? (Other than God commanding us to pray continually with thanksgiving). 

It happened today as I was listing to my long-suffering husband all the ways that life was not lining up with my script. In my lamenting, my feet moving around the room, my hands busy cleaning, my eyes landed on a scrap of paper left over from Thanksgiving celebrations.  In Reegan’s handwriting, she had posed the question, “what are you thankful for?”

With welling tears, I saw it for what it was, and it stopped my negative spiral mid-thought. 

It was the whisper of God quietly asking me, “but what are you thankful for?”

I always have a choice of where my thoughts take me. Will I be consumed with all that is wrong, or will I turn my mind to thanksgiving and praise for God’s tender provisions?

I can never say God doesn’t leave me little nudges and notes of reminder, sometimes in the handwriting of a girl.

“Let the peace that Christ gives control your thinking, because you were all called together in one body to have peace. Always be thankful.”  Colossians 3:15